Self respect...
Now this used to be a common enough concept didn't it? "where's your self-respect?" one might be asked if one was considering doing (or not doing) something thought to be inconsistent with your station in life.
The book I am currently reading is about a hearing girl born to deaf parents in the 30's in New York. The part which is stretching my thoughts right now is that the father (deaf from the age of 2 - after an illness) although he had limited vocabulary (even with his hands - he had none at all with his voice) found himself a job. There might be those who would feel pity on this man and think that the government should 'provide' for him (and his subsequent family) but that would have robbed him of one very important bit of his manhood - it would have been scandalous to offer him hand-outs. He was aware that others thought he was stupid (because he couldn't join in their shallow daily banter at the upholstery factory) but he told himself - with his hands - who he was and what his family stories were.

Stories were very important to this family - they told and re-told them to one another - especially at the seder meal and on the sabbath. They wanted the stories of their ancestors (going back 4 generations from what I've read - fascinating stuff, just little snippet of REAL people in history) to be passed on to their children.

If this man had not been allowed to get married (or if he had lived in a culture where marriage was despised and not a secure life-long bond) it would have destroyed him: his past and his future (and his role in the big story) were vital to his existence. One thinks of those who want to control populations to the extent of preventing people with genetic problems (the mother was one of three children who lacked something in her genes which resulted in deafness) from having children at all. That would bring about the end of a people-story chain which can never be repaired. A loss of HUMANness.

In these days of 'family planning' young people think it is their right (or their duty) to 'limit' the number of children they have. Back in the 30's there was no 'family planning' (officially - or widely available to normal families) and yet the Lord didn't bless everyone with a dozen children - some had none, others had 2 or 3 - I haven't read of any in 'Silence' who had 'too many'. The joint burdens of government interference with a man providing for his family by honest labour and being respected for it, and the unecessary worries sewn into our thinking by the repeated 'birth control' references are un-manning our men in a way which, if they don't think about it soon - will be the death of our people-stories. Then again, with the TV and the addiction to peeping into other people's ideas of an existence (one can't really call it 'home' or 'life') in such things as East Enders, maybe we already have lost our stories.
The older I get (and especially as I read this book called 'Silence' ) the more I remember my own stories - and stories (sadly too few) from my grandmother, mother and father. The children are always fascinated to hear these stories - but perhaps they are not told often enough - once to each child may not be enough to continue the people-story which is part of the far bigger story of mankind through which the Lord works his purposes.
In 'Silence' Ruth tells that her mother's family left Russia at the time of the pogroms and came to London. There her grandfather 'built' (that was what she was told) the synagogue in Whitechapel. A few years later Ruth's mother left (wrapped in a blanket and carried in a fruit basket), with her family, for New York.

One remarkable thing was that though the stories were being told over and over - esp. the story of the passover - Ruth's mother expressed astonishment when, at the age of 70 she was asked to tell the story of the passover to her (hearing) grandchildren. Ruth interpreted. One vital piece of the story was missing and Ruth said 'you forgot to say that we were SLAVES in Egypt' - the mother signed back in incredulity 'slaves?' - fancy her having lived through 70 passovers and not knowing that it was because they were slaves and that Pharoah wouldnt' let them go that there was the 'blood on the doorposts and angel of death' thing which they remembered with painstaking rituals annually!

I shall be thinking about how to avoid such devastating 'gaps' in my children's thinking - we kind of assume that we do what we do and they do it too - as though they will pick up the REASON (or even the full story) by osmosis. STories, our families and those God gave us in the Bible, I suspect, have a vital role to play in the complete passing on of the baton from one generation to the next. Let's live in such a way as to HAVE stories worth passing on to our grandchildren!